Multi-pitch anchor building using the rope?

I would like to see if anyone has some good examples of anchor construction using the rope only. I'm interested in any tips and advise on what to focus on and what to avoid.

Second. I am interested if anyone uses the 'Triple Loop Figure 8'? It takes some practice to get it equalized. Uses less rope than the BFK you get with a six strand figure 8. I appreciate any input.

Pic of the weave for a triple loop figure 8:

Clove hitches. No need to make it any more complicated than that.

Clove hitch you to the wall, big loop clip to piece, another big loop then clove hitch to finish. Take the ends tie a figure 8 (personal preference since it is easier to untie) or overhand.

Sure there are other ways but why make it more complicated than it needs to be. Adjustable, easy to break down, bomber. Plus it is familiar to a lot of people so it can be double checked.

Now that I am writing this I might of just got trolled?

maybe me too..

I always tie in with the rope. Fig 8 to me, and cloves to the other anchors...and belay through a piece of gear.

NICE! The cloves + 8 or overhand makes way more sense.

For some reason I thought every pro placement needed it's own full loop, and both those strands needed to thread the figure 8! Imagine a 6 strand figure 8!!! A BFK with elephantiasis is what you get! LMAO... Thanks again.

With doubles it is pretty much the only method I will use since it is so easy. Using a single, clove hitches as mentioned is pretty good and super versatile. You can equalize any number of pieces, or string them together in a line. The main downside is that you are looking at a lot of extension to your end of the rope if the first piece goes. Of course you can clip to the anchor point, but then it's getting messy again. Bunny ears 8 is a good one too that keeps you attached to more gear in case the first piece is not great.

The best anchor though is just a giant figure-8 on a bight tossed over a massive bolder or horn. On crowded ledges I will sometime see belayers fucking around with too much gear when there is a great 10-ton boulder sitting next to them. I walk up, throw a loop over it and have my second belayed up off of my harness before they have finished equalizing their nest of micro-cams and nuts.

This is kind of a thread hijack but what's the best way to sling a tree or a constriction with the rope?

HA ! I'm originally from the NE, home of the tree anchor! Tie a BIG fig 8 loop and clip in direct to your harness after going around the tree.

The only way this can fail is if the tree uproots or you are sucked through the biners. You also can move around pretty good.

Love using rope for the anchor, but keep in mind it works best if swinging leads. If you're dragging someone up a route, gets tricky trying to escape being tied in so you can lead every pitch. There may be a good method for this, but I'm not aware.

Adam Burch wrote:Love using rope for the anchor, but keep in mind it works best if swinging leads. If you're dragging someone up a route, gets tricky trying to escape being tied in so you can lead every pitch. There may be a good method for this, but I'm not aware.

If the anchor construction is sufficiently simple (ie. a couple clove hitches), the second can simply repeat the process underneath the existing anchor. Flip the rope, leader goes on belay, removes their clove hitches, and away they go.

Derek DeBruin wrote: If the anchor construction is sufficiently simple (ie. a couple clove hitches), the second can simply repeat the process underneath the existing anchor. Flip the rope, leader goes on belay, removes their clove hitches, and away they go.

Interesting. So attach new biners to each piece below the current biners, run your rope under the entire current anchor and clove to those biners, equalize and do a new masterpoint below the current, tie into that, remove old cloves and biners, flip the rope, and then you're off?

Sounds doable, but still extra work/time. Is it worth the extra weight of carrying a light cordalette/slings to make the anchor instead, vs your method? Not sure.

Some pretty great video here showing a simple way to equalize yourself and the master point w/out a BFK.

climbinglife.com/instructio…

Poke around the site and there are a lot of anchor building videos. At least 2 more dealing with just rope techniques.

I have used this method as originally described by rgold with great success.

The butterfly powerpoint is great for hooking up the belay in guide mode and creates an easily escapable system. The rest are clove hitches.

Quick, resilient, adjustable, stout.

Thanks to rgold for the pic.

Adam Burch wrote: Interesting. So attach new biners to each piece below the current biners, run your rope under the entire current anchor and clove to those biners, equalize and do a new masterpoint below the current, tie into that, remove old cloves and biners, flip the rope, and then you're off? Sounds doable, but still extra work/time. Is it worth the extra weight of carrying a light cordalette/slings to make the anchor instead, vs your method? Not sure.

You have the right idea, but not exactly. Think faster, lighter, and riskier. Perhaps more correctly, think with an assumption that an extremely low probability outstrips the demands of any extremely high consequence. I won't take credit for the method, though. It's done the rounds, I'm sure.

With rope anchors, the simplest solution certainly is to swing leads. However, if you wanted to lead in blocks, there are some options. In this particular case, I propose that you have two equally bomber points of protection (let's call them modern, stainless bolts with rings or #2 camalots in good rock). The leader arrives at the stance and clove hitches to one piece of protection.

From the backside of this clove hitch (the side not going to the leader), the leader clove hitches to the second piece of protection and cinches it tight. Assuming you want to belay directly off the anchor, a belay device can then be clipped to this same piece of protection. Alternately, a masterpoint could be tied between the two clove hitches and the belay device clipped there.

Note that nowhere in this process does the leader actually clip into a masterpoint. In the first method I describe, a masterpoint is not even constructed at all. This is easily replicated by the follower and takes almost no time (tying two clove hitches).

A similar but even faster idea would be for the leader to belay with a redirect. Leader arrives at the stance and clove hitches to the first piece (with a locker). The leader runs the followers's rope through a locker on the second piece. Leader belays off their waist with the rope redirected for the follower.

Follower arrives and turns the redirect into a clove hitch. Follower puts leader on belay; leader takes follower off belay. Flip the rope. Leader unclips clove hitch and leaves a simple redirect in the carabiner. This method requires two locking carabiners for the entire party and takes the time needed to tie a clove hitch and clip a carabiner.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine the risks involved relative to other anchor systems and whether those meet their personal needs for risk mitigation in the climbing terrain in which they find themselves.

As for your second question, is it worth the hassle to just carry a cord or sling, I typically say yes. I work as a guide, which means that leading every pitch and having 2 followers are pretty standard affairs for me; I bring cord, webolette, double-length slings, etc. as appropriate so that I can belay directly on the anchor, easily assist/rescue should the need arise, and allow for simplicity and security for my followers.

In my personal climbing, I typically carry two double-length slings and one quad-length dyneema runner for the party for anchor building. These two items plus the shoulder slings on the rack, the rope, and an assortment of anchor building knowledge typically allows the construction of anchors that are adequate for the task at hand. If I think I'll need to beef up rappel anchors, I substitute a cordelette for the quad-length runner.

Marc, cool pic (seen it before) but will need to ruminate a bit, not seeing the "easy escape". Looks like you're cloved to three points with a very short section of rope, those would need to be reversed somehow, eh?

Derek, interesting points, and as a guide, I'd imagine the struggle becomes worse and worse as you learn better and faster (see: more risky) ways to protect routes/build anchors/bring up clients, and have to balance that with the liability of bringing up those same clients.

I.E. simul climbing easier terrain and just placing the rope strategically behind horns/blocks vs placing too much pro, your discussed anchors with only 2 cams (gasp!), not even bothering with a belay device in the alpine (hip belays and biner-friction raps), etc etc.

I can think of lots of way to make it faster, but I'm trying to keep it as relatively safe as I would be with a cord on three pieces of pro. Always a trade-off...and then there's doing all this on half ropes...

Great question, and some great answers. I definitely agree with the "simpler is better" ideas put forth on here. I've found that if you're going to built an anchor based on more than two pieces, you can start to take up needed rope in an alpine setting when you're REALLY linking pitches. If you want some more redundancy, make a sliding-x (backed up with load- overhand knots if you have to) on two pieces and pair it with another piece and treated as two pieces with the "rope-ellete".

It costs you a shoulder-length sling, but gains you an extra few feet of rope that can make the difference between the leader making it to a nice ledge and getting stuck at a shitty hanging belay (or simul-climbing)

Adam Burch wrote: Derek, interesting points, and as a guide, I'd imagine the struggle becomes worse and worse as you learn better and faster (see: more risky) ways to protect routes/build anchors/bring up clients, and have to balance that with the liability of bringing up those same clients.

You'd be surprised. The more I work, the more I tend toward the conservative call in most cases. Rarely is true speed necessary as many client's aren't on routes demanding enough that it's an issue, and if weather presses the point, I usually go conservative and retreat when prudent. If I want to make a career out of guiding (and also mitigate my liability), the conservative call will keep me around longer than if I consistently hedge on the aggressive side. My personal climbing is a different story.

As for your three piece question, I'd argue that you don't need three pieces in many cases anyway, which saves you that problem. In cases where you really do need three, Blueprint has the idea pretty much dialed. Make two pieces become one, and then your three piece anchor is a two piece anchor.

You can do this with a shoulder sling as he suggests, or you could also "alpine equalize." This takes advantage of the fact that most of the pro we place is proximal to other pro. Imagine clipping one cam's 'biner to the 'biner of the cam directly below it, and then using the lower 'biner as one "leg" of the anchor. It is worth noting that each of these two cams would only take 25% (theoretically) of the master point load though, compared to 50% for the third piece on the other leg. Often these sorts of solutions can get you to where you only need to build anchors with two legs and save you time/material.

Half rope systems in some ways are even easier. For example, take our same two piece anchor. (In this case, maybe we're ice climbing, where 2 screws makes an anchor and half ropes are more common.) Clove hitch left rope to left piece, right rope to right piece. From back side of these clove hitches equalize the two rope strands and tie an overhand knot. Voila. There's the leader's redundant attachment to the anchor and a redundant masterpoint in very short order. Leading in blocks is still not as convenient as swinging leads, but doesn't take much--the follower just has to tie two clove hitches to make the same changeover discussed upthread.

Another Option

Not as good as the method in the other video.

Adam Burch wrote:Marc, cool pic (seen it before) but will need to ruminate a bit, not seeing the "easy escape". Looks like you're cloved to three points with a very short section of rope, those would need to be reversed somehow, eh?

Since it is my picture, I should perhaps reply. Any standard belay-escape method using a power point works with this in the same way as it would if the anchor had been made with a cordelette. No need to "reverse" anything.

There are belay escape situations in which the belayer will want to make use of the rope coming directly off the belay anchor, called the "free strand" in the diagram, if not as part of the escape process, then in order to rappel down for some purpose. As set up in the picture, the free strand only loads anchor #4. In order to distribute the load from the free strand to all the anchors, it has to be clipped back to the power point as illustrated by the arrow and comment in the photo.

Compared to the method in the Climbinglife video linked above, the method I described is more efficient, for at least the following reasons.

(1) The Climbinglife method requires you to estimate an amount of slack, which will at a later point be combined with another strand and become part of an overhand knot. If you guess wrong with the slack estimation, you have to back up several steps and redo the anchor. Moreover, this estimation process is going to be different and I think a bit harder if the three pieces are horizontally arrayed, rather than vertically arrayed as in the video.

(2) The Climbinglife method uses more rope, because it essentially constructs a separately-rigged power point for the second. Once the second has arrived, this extra rope cannot be recovered and made available for the next lead without re-rigging the anchor.

(3) Climbinglife goes to some trouble in the video to "equalize" tension in the strands, going so far as to pluck them to check the tension. But what he's "equalizing" are the strands attaching the belayer, not the strands supporting the power point! If, as I would think, the power point strands, on which the second's belay depends, deserve to be "equalized" as much as the belayer's strands, then a second process of plucking and adjusting ought to take place. That process will in any case be undermined by the overhand knot at the power point, which is hard to tie so that under load it releases exactly the same amount of slack to the strands emerging from it.

This is the moment when someone chimes in and says none of this matters, because any of these systems is going to work fine anyway. True enough, but in that case why not use a more efficient system that uses a little less rope and gives up nothing in terms of security?

Adam Burch wrote:will need to ruminate a bit, not seeing the "easy escape".

Easy escape:

If you're belaying off the "butterfly knot power point" your harness is not loaded. Lock off the belay, backup and just untie yourself.

If you're belaying off your harness, add a prusik to the climber's rope & load releasable knot at the "butterfly knot power point". Transfer the load just like with a cordelette belay escape. Backup and untie yourself.

If you need to rappel with the climber, you will have to rebuild the anchor using other slings/cord and transfer the load to the new anchor. Or, if really an emergency and time is of the essence and you have no other gear: escape the belay, set up your counterbalance or tandem rappel and use your belay knife to sacrifice a section of rope - leaving the rope anchor intact.

You might argue that, if I have to rebuild a new anchor why not just use a cordelette to begin with? Well, that's true and up to you. But in 40 years of climbing I've never had to escape the belay in anger.

Escaping the belay escapes me....I have never done this either.

As far as the second leading the next pitch, simply add another couple of biners to the existing set up and clove in.. you also have a first piece if you clip and belay through as described above. that way you belay through the anchor rather than off the anchor..which IMO kinda sucks except maybe when guiding.

Kevin Pula wrote:Some pretty great video here showing a simple way to equalize yourself and the master point w/out a BFK. climbinglife.com/instructio… Poke around the site and there are a lot of anchor building videos. At least 2 more dealing with just rope techniques.

This might be a dumb question but does this technique work at fixed anchors with only two points? Or is that third piece necessary to complete the set up?